Assessments
of each state's campaign finance disclosure program were
based on legal research, web site visits and research,
web site testing by outside evaluators and responses from
disclosure agency staff and activists working on campaign
financing at the state level. The
Project researched, but did not score states on, whether
state electronic filing programs have been implemented on
schedule based on findings from prior research conducted
in 1999. (Please see “Digital
Sunlight: A look back, a look ahead” for an analysis of progress made
by the states in electronic filing.)
The UCLA
School of Law and the Center for Governmental Studies researched
state campaign finance disclosure laws. The
legal research was conducted from July 2002 through March
2003 and was based on state laws as of December 31, 2002. Changes
in the laws that were made or implemented in 2003 will be
reflected in the next round of grades. Statutes, regulations,
rules and forms were evaluated in each state. Upon
completion of the research, the Project sent the research
findings to officials in each state for verification and
any discrepancies identified by the state officials were
evaluated.
The California
Voter Foundation (CVF) conducted research on state electronic
filing programs, accessibility to disclosure records and
online contextual and technical usability through a variety
of methods. Each state agency responsible
for overseeing campaign finance was asked to respond to a
questionnaire – either by phone interview or in writing.
All 50 state agencies responded to this request for information.
CVF also sought input from activists working on campaign
finance issues at the state level; 18 responded to CVF's
questionnaire either by phone or in writing. CVF researched
campaign finance disclosure information on the web sites
of each of the 50 states. A web site evaluation form was
created to ensure uniformity in the research and each state
web site was evaluated twice by CVF staff members between
January and June 2003.
The UCLA
School of Law conducted usability tests of state disclosure
web sites in May and June 2003. The goal
of the usability tests was to determine if the disclosure
information provided on the Internet is accessible to the
average citizen. Usability testers, recruited from
the undergraduate student population at UCLA, were asked
to perform specific tasks on each state's web site. The
time and number of mouseclicks it took to complete each task
were measured.
The tasks were as follows:
- Locate the state's disclosure web site starting from
the state's homepage;
- Ascertain the total contributions received by the incumbent
governor in his or her last campaign (testers were given
a list of incumbent governors that included the year they
were last elected); and,
- Provide
the name and amount contributed by any individual contributor
to the incumbent governor's last campaign.
The second
measure of usability was a survey in which each tester
was asked to evaluate his or her experiences on each site. The states were assigned randomly to testers,
with each tester testing five different states. The
experiment was administered twice to thirty different students,
and six different students tested each state. A more
detailed explanation of the usability test is included as
an appendix to this report.
Following the completion of the research and usability testing,
CVF compiled preliminary scores for each state that were
reviewed by the Grading State Disclosure Judges before final
scores, grades and ranks were determined. |
